Aiden Bryce is here!

My grandson Aiden Bryce arrived at 11:31 on March 22nd weighing in at 6lbs 2oz. He is doing very well, and we are VERY excited he is here.

He decided he would arrive 3 1/2 weeks early, so he caught us off guard. My daughter's baby shower was scheduled for 3/24, so we had to put that on hold, and I didn't have a thing crocheted or knit for him yet! Of course, I am the biggest procrastinator in the world anyway, so this wasn't a great shock. I am sure he will have plenty of blankets and socks over the next several years. We had been busy getting the house ready for him though, by dusting and shampooing carpets and such, so at least that was done.

Having said all that, I haven't been checking blogs much in the past month or so. In addition to getting the house "baby" ready, I have also been busy trying to paint my bedroom, and move the furniture around to be more craft friendly. I knit or crochet while I wind down and catch up on whatever TiVo records for me each evening, but even that has been minimal.

No thread dyeing either. Hoping to get back on the dyeing wagon soon, and even give 4-ply dishcloth cotton a try. Still want to dye some smaller thread sizes as well. I found an awesome kitchen hutch on craigslist that is perfect for all of my thread inventory and dyeing supplies. So instead of having it strewn all over the house and bags of dyed thread waiting to be shipped sitting on my bedroom floor, I have plastic bins and shelves to put it all on and actually be *gasp* organized!

So now that things are settling down into a routine, I am hoping to get back to my hobbies. Nice thing about being a grandma, is that I get to cuddle and love on him, but I don't have to get up in the middle of the night, I can roll over and put the pillow over my head. Side note: I am going by GeeBee (G.B. - Grandma Brenda), because I am just not ready to be called "Grandma"...it was bad enough I turned 40 in November...I don't need to be called Grandma too!!! LOL

I haven't forgotten about my Pay It Forward gals either...good thing I have a year! But I should have some things ready to go out in the very near future.

Knitting

Last Friday, I decided that my right hand WAS going to cooperate, and I WAS going to learn to knit. Efforts to learn over the Christmas holiday break had left me frustrated because after crocheting, knitting just made me feel like I had 20 fingers, and my right hand had a mind of it's own (I'm a leftie).

I joined a dishcloth KAL on Yahoo, picked a pattern, and jumped in using some helpful knitting videos I found online. Much easier than trying to learn it from a book. I had to make the decision to learn to knit English or Continental, because to learn the left-handed message would mean that I would have to continually make modify patterns (from what I gathered)to allow for knitting left-handed. That didn't sound fun. (I have never had to modify a pattern to crochet left-handed.) I decided to go with the English version, although from what I have read, Continental is easier. I may try that at another time. Start with the difficult, then move to the easy...right? So...I jumped in...

Here is my first completed dishcloth...

It is far from perfect, but I started over more times than I care to count, and frogged back several times as well. It's not as easy to frog back in knitting as crocheting, I discovered. So I was pretty much ready to be done, and tired of going back, so I just pressed on until I was finished.

And my second...

If you look closely, you can see a butterfly pattern. I probably should have used a solid color to do this in, but it is what I had in my stash from a previous CAL in the 'Ville that I never finished. I didn't have to start over but once, but still had to frog back quite a few times, but it went better.

I sent both of these to my Mom for her birthday, cuz what Mom doesn't like to get handmade things from their kids? I felt like I was back in kindergarten and did my first fingerpainting...LOL! I have a couple more in progress, and with each one I get better. I like it more and more, and my right hand has become quite cooperative now that it has figured out what the heck is going on. I'm stubborn that way.

Gone in 30 minutes!

When I started dyeing thread, and then decided to try selling it on eBay, I didn't have high expectations of amazing sales until I built up some regular customers and had been on for awhile (6 months of selling or longer). I didn't actively use eBay until last year, even though I have had an account for years. My feedback stars are low, but I have 100% positive feedback, but those were all for buying, not selling.
I tried Etsy...thinking it was more crafty-based, and I didn't even get any hits on it at all. So, I went back to eBay.

My first couple of auctions went for the starting bid of .99. Alright...gotta start somewhere right? AND...I got my first seller feedback. Still going on 100%. Next round had a couple of new bidders, but the same bidder that won my first auction won this one. Which is alright too, repeat business doesn't hurt. Then I put up a few threads at Buy it Now pricing, and those went alright. My first auction winner has been a regular customer, buying threads each time I have some available. She was also very helpful with suggestions, (pastels, Buy it Now, keywords for title, etc.) After my first couple of offerings, I decided it would be much easier to have a store. At this point, I am not really making a profit, but what I am making is paying for more thread to dye, new dye colors and my seller fees on eBay.

So...I opened my store on December 20th. Put up my first inventory, sprinkled with some auctions to draw in new customers. It went steadily. I was pleased. The batch I dyed last weekend, was going to be ready for listing on Wednesday, so I put a note in my header that new colorways would arrive on date/time. I had them scheduled, so @ 8pm on the dot, there they were all pretty and shining in my store. So, being satisfied everything was listed as scheduled, I go get something to eat, watch a little TV, trying to stay away from my computer and hitting refresh every 2 seconds. Something about a watched pot doesn't boil...

I couldn't stand it anymore, and had to go check to see if I had any interest what-so-ever...imagine my suprise when I refresh my store, and all of my new inventory is missing!!!...with the exception of 1 colorway I had just added, they were gone. What did eBay do with them? What the heck? I am going to have to figure out what I did wrong! Lo and behold I open my Selling Manager page (which I should have done to start with)...and I had sold all those missing balls in the first 30 minutes!!! OH MY!!! Mystery of the disappearing inventory solved!

I don't know if it will go that way all the time, but it sure was exciting and fun! I am going to dye some more this weekend, and hopefully up the production quantity. I have been being careful so as not to mess up a whole bunch, but I think I have the process down now, so feel comfortable doing bigger lots.

Just had to share!

Thank You Christina!

Thank you Christina! I received my first Pay It Forward item! It came at a time where a smile and a warm fuzzy feeling were needed and much apprciated.

Now I have to get busy on the items for my PIF. I know I have a year, but I am a notorious procrastinator, and if I don't get on it now, then I will be scrambling later, and I don't want to do that. I am a big thread crocheter, so more than likely it will be something done in thread.

While I wait for my camera batteries to charge, I am off to start another batch of my dyed threads. My last batch did pretty well, and if I don't get on the stick then I am going to run out of inventory.

Thanks for the kind words and support for my blahs. They are getting better. I guess blahs are kind of like gaining weight, building up gradually, and you can't git rid you can't get rid of it overnight. I know everyone has to deal with both the blahs and weight occassionally, so it is good to know there are others who understand. One day at a time!

New Year Blahs

I don't know what it is, but I thought with the holidays over, I would get out of my gritchy holiday mood I always fall into. Not so. Everything feels overwhelming. It didn't help that Yahoo had an article on their homepage one day last week about how an unorganized/cluttered home (like mine, can be a sign of everything from ADHD, depression, all the way up to a brain disorder. In fact, there weren't many mental conditions left out of the list. So, not only am I an unorganized clutterbug, I am a mental-case too! LOL Soooo...I pondered that over some crocheting.

After such a productive week off, I have not been able to crochet much. I get about 30 minutes in before I go to bed. My 'Ashley' doily is coming along slowly. I am to the spirals though, and once I get past those little buggers, I think it will go pretty quick. Last nights efforts however were lost, as I discovered a mistake and had to frog back to where I had started when I sat down. Better there than after I was done with all of them right? I have to do some counting, but I may be off even further back than that. I am hoping not, but I was tired last night, so when I counted the spirals I did have, and what I need to have, I seem to have some extras on one side. I am going to recount tonight and I hope I am wrong. I should have some photos for the next blog to show the progress. Right now, it just looks a little funny with all these spirals (I have to do 80) hanging around the edge.

Happy Crocheting everyone!

End of the Year

It has been a pretty productive week off craft-wise, and I still have a couple of days left.

I went through all of my doily books and filled my queue up on Ravely, started and finished a doily (shown in previous post), and started another. I got my huge thread order of 10 big 1-lb balls of thread, got about 6 of them ready to dye (12 hanks), and dyed 5 of the hanks. I should be able to dye another 4, but the other 3 will have to wait for my soda ash/dye order to arrive (maybe tomorrow?), otherwise they have to wait until next weekend. I can always get the other 4 balls wound into hanks while I wait too. I won't run out of soda ash for a while, as I ordered 5 lbs of it, so I can just keep on dyeing as long as I have thread.

I haven't done all of the housework/deep cleaning stuff I wanted to do, but hey, that is not nearly as much fun as the other stuff I have done!

Happy New Year!

Amaretto

Amaretto from PK's Coffee 'n' Cream Doilies. I used Aunt Lydia's light peach and my hand-dyed colorway 'Salena'. The image is clickable and shows the detail of the entire doily nicely.

I've got Ashley on the hook from PK's Victorian Spiral Doilies, book 1. Not too sure how I feel about it yet, but it was next in my Ravelry queue, and I decided I was going to work through the list alphabetically. Never know until you try...right? I decided to do it in Aunt Lydia's Dusty Rose. Not sure yet if I will use any of my hand-dyed stash yet, we'll see how it goes.